Almost. Seems I have the unfortunate issue of my home ISP not being able to connect to my host server’s IP address, resulting in nothing but a time out when I try to access my own site. At this time, I’m only able to post from work. Good. Times.

But! Got a few more things to clean up, and this’ll be the last post on this site. You’ll notice the awesomesauce that is Wowhead mouseover links. Huzzah. :)

Part two in my gearing list, I guess. I touched a little bit on some of the profession items in my previous post, but I’d like to delve deeper and get into the bonuses as well as other useful items.

Please take note that some of my HP values will likely confuse you. Unconfirmed by Blizzard, someone has noted that without Talents or any kind of multiplier, 1 Stamina was giving 14 health in Beta, up from 10. I will be using both the 14HP and 10HP values for any kind of HP bonus. The rest of math values are explained and cited at the end of the post.

Unrelated, I should hopefully be making the move to a new site this week if all goes well.

Alchemy

Flask of Enhancement – These silly little perma-flasks are meant to be used when not using consumable flasks. It’s Blizzard’s way of giving Alchemists a permanent bonus without Mixology. Unfortunately, there is no stam tagged onto this one whether by design or not. Unaffected by Mixology. Grants 80 Agility. With that value, it can be assumed the mixology bonus for flasks is 80 of a stat, like it is with other bonuses. I can then safely assume the Stamina mixology bonus on the flask to be 120.

*At this time, the Mixology bonus is only giving 80 stamina(see comments), which makes Alchemy a rather under-budget profession. I am hoping this is merely a bug.*

There really are no good Battle Elixirs this time around. Using an Elixir Combo will become a survivability loss, as well as a gold sink. I’d just plain stick with the Flask of Steelskin.

-Potions:

Earthen Potion – It’s sad, but these potions no longer persist for 2 minutes. Instead, they only last 25 seconds. If you can time it right, I would still pop one before combat starts so you can have another ready for when you need it.
What this yields:
~6.8% Effective Damage Reduction

Mythical Healing Potion – Another option to use instead of the Earthen. Typical healing potion. Personally, I would never use one of these over an armor potion unless I was in dire need of healing and have exhausted my health stone.

Enchanting

Windwalk – Very obviously a tank enchant, but the 15% movement speed is a bit interesting. Flavor, I guess? The proc itself, even if it has high uptime, isn’t all that great.
What this yields:
~3.4% Dodge on proc-before DR. Start factoring in DR and the percentage lowers.

Mending – (because people are going to ask) Here’s the deal with enchants like these. They are random and the heal is tiny. Lifeward and Lifestealing were only good for soloing. I don’t expect Mending to be much different in that regard. I would leave this one alone.

Landslide – Another threat enchant. I imagine its uptime to be roughly similar to Berserk (~30%), which wouldn’t make it a valuable mitigation tool via Savage Defense.
What this yields:
1,250 AP (1,375 AP Raid Buffed) Extra 39.29 base SD absorb

Cloak-

Protection – Given that there are no other options, this is the tank cloak enchant. Don’t even look at the crit one or I will find your house and break your internet.

So, for a cost of ~1k HP (when you see Cata health, you’ll see why this is insignificant), you gain a larger SD absorb, more AP, some crit and some dodge. It is indeed Peerless. Oh-ho-ho. (…I’m sorry.)

Bracers-

Dodge – Yes. A dodge bracer enchant. Baby Cenarius is screaming bloody murder. Currently, there is no stamina alternative, and the other options are either Hit or Expertise, which no tank should be enchanting with the advent of reforging (and smart gear selection).
What this yields:
0.28% Dodge – In the words of a friend: Crit-Sigh.

Gloves-

Greater Mastery – Again, really the only good glove enchant. Other options are strength(no), Expertise(see above), and Haste(the stat we reforge first?).
What this yields:
0.36256 Mastery or 1.45% Bonus to SD

Boots-

Earthen Vitality – The Tuskarr’s of Cata. There is no other Stamina option, and the only other option would be Agi enchants. Runspeed is yummy.
What this yields:
*14HP* 514 HP (540 HP w/ Kings or Mark)
*10HP* 367 HP (386 HP w/ Kings or Mark)

Engineering

This is a little harder to map out, given that engineering is the quirky friend of the profession world. (She’s got a greeeaaat personality…[and also happens to be psycho! But you didn’t hear it from me.]) Some people just plain love it regardless.

Few things I have noticed for its crafting list: No 85 version of Nitro Boosts; I imagine the 80 version works just fine, no new helm tinker, and no new cloak tinkers. It’s possible these aren’t implimented yet, I missed them all together, or there are no plans to add them.

Helm-

Agile Bio-Optic Killshades – This is an interesting turn for Engineering. It seems the epic crafted shades are roughly equal to tier 11, depending on stats. I wouldn’t put them ahead of the heroic version just yet, but they are definitely a viable option for offset if you’re an engineer, specifically because you are able to choose which secondary stats you want via the Cogwheels. In addition, I assume you can replace the cogwheels at any time, so they are extremely flexible to your needs.

Though, the fatal flaw with the engineering helms is, they seem to only last a tier, which is unfortunate.

Grounded Plasma Shield – Fairly large absorb… with a fairly large cooldown. This thing would be great if the CD were lowered to 2 or 3 minutes, but at the current time, it’s a 5 minute cooldown. Timed right, it could come in handy.

Herbalism

Lifeblood – On-use Haste rating. Honestly, this is fairly useless for any kind of tank. All it would do is help a tiny bit with rage gain.

Inscription

Inscription seems to have finally caught up to the other professions in terms of bonuses. It also seems to be the only place to find a blue-quality relic that doesn’t involve Points or PvP, and it’s BoP.

Relic-

Silver Inlaid Leaf – As said above, this is a relic that’s fairly equivalent to the Points relic and is Inscription-only.

Figurine – Earthen Guardian – Decent Stam trinket with a decent use. I’d definitely be using this as a beginner’s trinket, if not further depending on luck.
8.06% Dodge on Use

Leatherworking

At this point in Beta testing, Leatherworking is far and away the best profession available for all tanks and all agility-based classes. Blizzard dropped the ball with wrist enchants (and I hope they pick it up), and Leatherworking blows them away. I wouldn’t run off to switch to Leatherworking asap, because Blizzard released a stam bracer enchant after Wrath release, so there is still that chance. But in order for Leatherworking to be brought down from its pedestal, a 75 stam enchant will need to exist.

There you have it, folks. The profession list. As I said, I will do a quick review of the math involved. All of my rating values were taken and derived from Whitetooth’s thread: Combat Ratings at level 85(Cataclsym) over at EJ.

Just a quick post before I go to work. Here’s a quick run-down of what we’re looking at for rep and a few professions. I’m still sorting through the dungeon list, and will later go through each item to determine a BiS pre-heroics and pre-raid gearing list.

-Quartermaster-D’lom the Collector
(The Sons of Hodir of Cataclysm – Quest chain in Deepholme will give honored upon completion. 6 Dailies are opened afterwards. This reputation does have a Tabard this time around. However, the chain should be done while leveling through Deepholme at 83.)

And by moving, I mean switching blog hosting sites. Not being able to use mouseover links from Wowhead creates serious design flow problems in my blog and I don’t like it. I’ve been going through cata.wowhead to get a jump on item lists and it would be so damn nice to have the mouseover feature for that kind of post.

I’ll keep you posted, but as soon as I find a site that supports it, I will be relocating.

This is before the stamina / mastery changes on beta. I’m only posting this for my own reference later on, and so you can see the huge difference between bears and the other tanks. These are all premades with heroic level blues. All the gear is gemmed and enchanted in the same manner. I went for socket bonuses that I thought were worth it. All stats are unbuffed and in proper stances/forms.

Also note, that block is NOT avoidance like dodge and parry are. Block is shaving off 30% of physical damage on a blocked hit, hence why Bears have SD and DKs now have Blood Shield.

I do this, again, to show the massive lead that bears have both health and avoidance-wise. Not to mention, the incredible scaling that SD has with HP and Vengeance so they are very far ahead of the other 3. That is nowhere near balanced. Bears take less damage without even trying.

Now, the 65-35% SD “nerf” was coming. Bear mastery still scales from Vengeance AP. What this change did was bring us down to Warrior and Paladin, with, more than likely, a slight lead on physical mitigation.

The stamina nerf, while painful, was somewhat necessary. We do not have “less” than the other tanks. I should still like to have more health, even if it’s 1% more, but it is what it is. If we were over-nerfed, and it will be noticeable with raid testing, we will be brought back up.

You may also notice the ~4k armor difference that we have. We take 2% less damage from our forms than Paladins and Warriors. DKs have the lead with 2% less than Bears, and 4% less with Paladins and Warriors.

Now after looking through all of this… And noting that DKs have a similar mastery to us, you may think that DKs are now THE tank. And with the changes… they will be. The problem here is, there hasn’t been enough DK representation in Beta raid testing to make a numbers adjust. If they are not nerfed before Cata, chances are they will be by the end of the first tier of raiding.

This is the absolute closest I, and others, have seen tank balance in terms of damage taken. While the stamina hit still stings, it’s too early to be crying wolf.

Also, Survival Instincts was brought up to have a 3 minute CD. Still 50%, still 12 sec duration.